Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie is an Indian-born British and American novelist known for blending magic realism with historical fiction. His work explores the connections and disruptions between Eastern and Western civilizations, often focusing on the Indian subcontinent. His second novel, Midnight's Children, won the Booker Prize in 1981 and was later recognized as the "best novel of all winners" during the prize's 25th and 40th anniversary celebrations, solidifying his place as a significant literary figure.
In 2008, The Times ranked Salman Rushdie 13th on its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.
On June 1947, Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay, British India, into a Kashmiri Muslim family.
In 1964, Rushdie moved to England to attend Rugby School in Rugby, Warwickshire.
In 1975, Rushdie's debut novel, the science fiction tale Grimus, was published but generally ignored by the public and literary critics.
In 1976, Salman Rushdie married Clarissa Luard, literature officer of the Arts Council of England.
In 1977, Roman Polanski was charged for drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl, which led to his arrest in Switzerland in 2009, prompting Salman Rushdie to sign a petition for his release.
In 1979, Salman Rushdie and Clarissa Luard had a son named Zafar.
In 1981, Rushdie published his novel, Midnight's Children, which gained him recognition. It follows the life of Saleem Sinai, born at the stroke of midnight as India gained its independence.
In 1981, Salman Rushdie's second novel, Midnight's Children, won the Booker Prize. The novel was later deemed "the best novel of all winners" on two occasions, for the 25th and 40th anniversary of the prize.
In 1981, Salman Rushdie's work, Midnight's Children, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the prize.
Midnight's Children won the 1981 Booker Prize.
Until 1982, Rushdie worked for the advertising agency Ayer Barker, where he wrote the line "That'll do nicely" for American Express.
In 1983, Rushdie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
In 1983, Salman Rushdie's work, Shame, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
In 1987, Rushdie wrote a non-fiction book about Nicaragua called The Jaguar Smile, based on his first-hand experiences and research at the scene of Sandinista political experiments.
In 1987, Salman Rushdie divorced his first wife, Clarissa Luard. Prior to this, he left Clarissa in the mid-1980s for Robyn Davidson.
In September 1988, The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie was published by Viking Penguin Publishing, causing immediate controversy in the Islamic world due to perceived irreverent depictions of Muhammad. The book was banned in many countries with large Muslim communities.
In 1988, Rushdie's most controversial work, The Satanic Verses, was published and won the Whitbread Award.
In 1988, Salman Rushdie married the American novelist Marianne Wiggins.
In 1988, Salman Rushdie's work, The Satanic Verses, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
On January 22, 1989, in response to protests against 'The Satanic Verses', Salman Rushdie published a column in The Observer calling Muhammad 'one of the great geniuses of world history', while maintaining that the novel is an attempt to write about migration and its stresses.
On February 14, 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini proclaimed a fatwa on Radio Tehran ordering Salman Rushdie's execution for blasphemy against Islam due to his book 'The Satanic Verses'.
On March 7, 1989, the United Kingdom and Iran broke diplomatic relations over the Salman Rushdie controversy following the fatwa issued against him.
On August 3, 1989, Mustafa Mahmoud Mazeh, using an alias, died in a London hotel when a book bomb he was priming with RDX explosives detonated prematurely. The Organization of the Mujahidin of Islam claimed he died preparing an attack on Salman Rushdie. He is considered the first martyr in the mission to kill Rushdie.
In 1989, The New York Times published 'Words For Salman Rushdie', featuring 28 distinguished writers from 21 countries expressing solidarity with Rushdie in the face of the fatwa.
In 1989, following the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, Christopher Hitchens voiced his strong support for Rushdie, seeing it as a battle between everything he loved (literature, freedom) versus everything he hated (dictatorship, censorship).
In 1989, following the fatwa, Salman Rushdie described himself as a lapsed Muslim shaped by Muslim culture and a student of Islam. He also stated his point of view was that of a secular human being, not believing in supernatural entities.
In December 1990, Salman Rushdie issued a statement reaffirming his Muslim faith, distancing himself from statements in "The Satanic Verses" that cast aspersion on Islam or Prophet Mohammad, and opposing the release of the paperback editing of the novel.
In 1990, Rushdie published Haroun and the Sea of Stories, which is about the magic of story-telling and an allegorical defence of the power of stories over silence.
In 1990, Rushdie reviewed Thomas Pynchon's Vineland in The New York Times.
In 1990, a Pakistani film entitled International Gorillay (International Guerillas) was released. The film depicted Rushdie as a villain plotting Pakistan's downfall and ends with his death. The British Board of Film Classification initially refused it a certificate, but Rushdie later said he would not sue if it were released.
In 1991, Salman Rushdie gave an address at Columbia University to mark the 200th anniversary of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, where he stated 'free speech is life itself'.
In 1991, the Italian translator of "The Satanic Verses" was stabbed but survived. Days later, Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator, was stabbed to death.
In 1992, Salman Rushdie cited the release of his 1990 statement reaffirming his Muslim faith as perhaps his lowest point, regretting its language.
On August 11, 1993, despite the fatwa against him, Salman Rushdie made a public appearance at London's Wembley Stadium during a U2 concert. This event occurred amidst violence sparked by the publication of his book and the fatwa, with bookstores firebombed and attacks on those associated with the book.
In 1993, 100 writers and intellectuals from the Muslim world expressed solidarity with Salman Rushdie in the collection 'For Rushdie'.
In 1993, Midnight's Children won the Best of the Bookers special prize.
In 1993, Salman Rushdie divorced his second wife, Marianne Wiggins.
In 1994, Rushdie published East, West, a collection of short stories.
In 1995, Rushdie's novel The Moor's Last Sigh, a family saga spanning some 100 years of India's history, was published and won the Whitbread Award.
In 1995, Salman Rushdie's work, The Moor's Last Sigh, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
In February 1997, Ayatollah Hasan Sane'i, leader of the Fifteenth of Khordad Foundation, announced that the blood money offered for the assassination of Salman Rushdie would be increased from $2 million to $2.5 million. Subsequently, another religious foundation in Iran increased its reward from $2.8 million to $3.3 million.
In 1997, Salman Rushdie married British editor and author Elizabeth West and they had a son named Milan.
On September 24, 1998, as a precondition for restoring diplomatic relations with the UK, the Iranian government, led by Mohammad Khatami, publicly committed to neither support nor hinder assassination operations against Salman Rushdie.
In 1998, Iran's former president Mohammad Khatami proclaimed the fatwa "finished"; however, it was never officially lifted.
In 1999, Rushdie published The Ground Beneath Her Feet, a riff on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, casting Orpheus and Eurydice as rock stars. The book features many original song lyrics; one was the basis for the U2 song "The Ground Beneath Her Feet", with Rushdie credited as the lyricist.
In 1999, Rushdie was appointed a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France.
In 1999, Salman Rushdie first met Padma Lakshmi, who was 28 years old at the time while Rushdie was 51.
In 1999, Salman Rushdie had an operation to correct ptosis, a problem with the levator palpebrae superioris muscle that causes drooping of the upper eyelid.
In 1999, Salman Rushdie supported the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, leading to Tariq Ali labeling him as part of a group of "warrior writers".
Since 2000, Rushdie has lived in the United States.
In 2001, Rushdie's novel Fury, set mainly in New York, was published.
In 2001, Salman Rushdie supported the US-led campaign to remove the Taliban in Afghanistan.
In 2002, Rushdie's non-fiction collection Step Across This Line was published.
In 2003, Salman Rushdie began writing a collection of essays which would later be published in 2021 as 'Languages of Truth'.
In 2003, Salman Rushdie criticized the war in Iraq, stating that while there was a case for removing Saddam Hussein, the US unilateral military intervention was unjustifiable.
From 2004 to 2006, Salman Rushdie was the President of PEN American Center and founder of the PEN World Voices Festival.
In 2004, Salman Rushdie and Elizabeth West ended their relationship after a miscarriage.
In 2004, shortly after his third divorce, Salman Rushdie married Padma Lakshmi.
In mid-August 2005, Salman Rushdie called for a reform in Islam in a guest opinion piece printed in The Washington Post and The Times, advocating the application of higher criticism.
In November 2005, Salman Rushdie contributed to Free Expression Is No Offence, a collection of essays by several writers published by Penguin, writing about his opposition to the British government's introduction of the Racial and Religious Hatred Act.
In 2005, Rushdie's novel Shalimar the Clown, a story about love and betrayal set in Kashmir and Los Angeles, was published.
In 2005, Salman Rushdie's novel Shalimar the Clown received the Hutch Crossword Book Award and was a finalist for the Whitbread Book Awards in the UK.
In 2005, the film 'Water' by Indo-Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta faced violent protests.
In early 2005, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's leader, reaffirmed Khomeini's fatwa against Salman Rushdie in a message to Muslim pilgrims in Mecca. The Revolutionary Guards also declared the death sentence still valid.
In March 2006, Salman Rushdie signed the manifesto "Together Facing the New Totalitarianism", a statement warning of the dangers of religious extremism, which was published in Charlie Hebdo.
On May 12, 2006, Salman Rushdie was a guest host on The Charlie Rose Show, where he interviewed Indo-Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta, whose 2005 film Water faced violent protests.
During the 2006 Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah stated that if a Muslim had carried out Khomeini's fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the insults against Prophet Mohammed in Denmark, Norway, and France would not have occurred.
From 2004 to 2006, Salman Rushdie was the President of PEN American Center and founder of the PEN World Voices Festival.
In 2006, Salman Rushdie supported Jack Straw's comments criticizing the wearing of the niqab, a veil covering the face except for the eyes. Rushdie stated his support for Straw's position, viewing it as part of a long battle against the limitation of women. He mentioned that his three sisters would never wear the veil.
In 2006, in an interview with Point of Inquiry, Salman Rushdie described his views as a critic of moral and cultural relativism.
In a 2006 interview about his novel Shalimar the Clown, Salman Rushdie laments the division of Kashmir into zones of Indian and Pakistani administration as having cut his family down the middle.
In a 2006 interview with PBS, Salman Rushdie identified himself as a "hardline atheist."
In January 2007, Padma Lakshmi asked Salman Rushdie for a divorce, which they later filed in July of the same year.
On June 16, 2007, Salman Rushdie was knighted for services to literature in the Queen's Birthday Honours. This honor was met with protests from many Muslim-majority nations and sparked controversy.
In 2007, Rushdie was knighted for his services to literature.
In 2007, Salman Rushdie began a five-year term as Distinguished Writer in Residence at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, where he also deposited his archives.
In 2007, Salman Rushdie's novel Shalimar the Clown was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award.
In May 2008, Salman Rushdie was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
On August 26, 2008, Salman Rushdie received an apology at the High Court in London from his former bodyguard Ron Evans, Evans' co-author, and their publisher. This was in response to a planned book by Evans recounting Rushdie's behavior while in hiding, which Rushdie dismissed as lies and took legal action against.
In September 2008, Salman Rushdie appeared as a panellist on the HBO programme Real Time with Bill Maher.
In 2008, Midnight's Children won the Booker of Bookers special prize.
In 2008, The Enchantress of Florence was published, focusing on the past, telling the story of a European's visit to Akbar's court, and his revelation that he is a lost relative of the Mughal emperor.
In 2008, The Times ranked Salman Rushdie 13th on its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.
In March 2009, Salman Rushdie appeared as a panellist on the HBO programme Real Time with Bill Maher.
In 2009, Salman Rushdie signed a petition in support of film director Roman Polanski, calling for his release after Polanski was arrested in Switzerland.
In 2009, actress Pia Glenn slammed Salman Rushdie as "cowardly, dysfunctional, and immature" after he dumped her via email.
In September 2010, production began for the cinematic adaptation of Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children, with the film also being called Midnight's Children.
In November 2010, Luka and the Fire of Life, a sequel to Haroun and the Sea of Stories, was published.
In November 2010, Salman Rushdie became a founding patron of Ralston College, a new liberal arts college that has adopted as its motto a Latin translation of a phrase ('free speech is life itself') from an address he gave at Columbia University in 1991.
In 2010, Anwar al-Awlaki published an Al-Qaeda hit list in Inspire magazine, including Salman Rushdie along with other figures claimed to have insulted Islam.
In 2010, U2 bassist Adam Clayton recalled that Bono had been calling Salman Rushdie from the stage every night on the Zoo TV tour. He also recalled how Rushdie was a regular visitor after his surprise appearance at Wembley, with a backstage pass he used often.
In June 2011, Salman Rushdie announced that he had written the first draft of a script for a new television series for Showtime, called The Next People, a paranoid science-fiction series where people are disappearing and being replaced by other people. He will also serve as an executive producer for the show.
In January 2012, Salman Rushdie cancelled his appearance at the Jaipur Literature Festival in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India, citing a possible threat to his life. He later suggested that state police agencies lied about paid assassins being sent to Jaipur to kill him.
In March 2012, Salman Rushdie returned to India to address a conference in New Delhi on March 16.
In July 2012, Salman Rushdie blamed a shooting at a Colorado cinema on the American right to keep and bear arms.
In September 2012, Rushdie's memoir, Joseph Anton: A Memoir, was published.
On September 18, 2012, Salman Rushdie's memoir of his years in hiding, titled Joseph Anton, was released. Joseph Anton was Rushdie's secret alias during the height of the controversy surrounding the fatwa.
In 2012, Rushdie published Joseph Anton: A Memoir, an account of his life in the wake of the events following The Satanic Verses.
In 2012, Rushdie published his short story "In the South" on the Booktrack platform.
In 2012, Salman Rushdie was critical of Pakistan's former Prime Minister Imran Khan after Khan took personal jabs at him in an interview.
In 2012, the cinematic adaptation of Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children, directed by Deepa Mehta, was released.
In 2014, Salman Rushdie taught a seminar on British Literature at an institution.
In September 2015, Salman Rushdie joined the New York University Journalism Faculty as a Distinguished Writer in Residence.
In November 2015, former Indian minister P. Chidambaram acknowledged that banning The Satanic Verses was wrong.
In 2015, Rushdie published Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, a modern take on the One Thousand and One Nights. Based on the conflict of scholar Ibn Rushd, Rushdie explores themes of transnationalism and cosmopolitanism by depicting a war of the universe with a supernatural world of jinns.
In 2015, Rushdie talked about literature, grand narratives, and feminism in an interview with New York magazine's The Cut. He believes freedoms of literature to be universal, and also shows support for feminism.
In 2015, Rushdie was named Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University.
In February 2016, more money was added to the bounty for the assassination of Salman Rushdie.
In 2016, Salman Rushdie acquired American citizenship and voted for Hillary Clinton in that year's election.
In 2017, Salman Rushdie appeared as himself in episode 3 of season 9 of Curb Your Enthusiasm, offering advice to Larry David on how to deal with the fatwa that has been ordered against him.
In 2017, The Golden House, a satirical novel by Salman Rushdie set in contemporary America, was published.
In August 2019, Salman Rushdie criticized the revocation of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, tweeting that what was happening there was an atrocity.
In 2019, Quichotte, a modern retelling of Don Quixote by Salman Rushdie, was published.
In 2019, Salman Rushdie's work, Quichotte, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
In July 2020, Salman Rushdie was one of the 153 signers of the "Harper's Letter", also known as "A Letter on Justice and Open Debate", that expressed concern that "the free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted."
In 2020, Salman Rushdie completed writing a collection of essays that he started in 2003 which would later be published in 2021 as 'Languages of Truth'.
In 2021, Languages of Truth, a collection of essays written between 2003 and 2020 by Salman Rushdie, was published.
In 2021, Salman Rushdie married American poet and novelist Rachel Eliza Griffiths.
On August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie was attacked while about to start a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York. He was stabbed repeatedly and airlifted to UPMC Hamot in Erie, Pennsylvania, for surgery.
In October 2022, it was reported that Salman Rushdie had lost sight in one eye and the use of one hand but survived the August 2022 murder attempt.
In 2022, Rushdie survived a stabbing at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York, that led to loss of his right eye and damage to his liver and hands.
In 2022, Salman Rushdie was appointed a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in the Birthday Honours for services to literature.
In 2022, Salman Rushdie was attacked and severely injured while about to give a public lecture in New York.
In February 2023, Rushdie's fifteenth novel, Victory City, was published. The book is described as an epic tale of a woman who breathes a fantastical empire into existence and was Rushdie's first released work after he was attacked and severely injured in 2022.
In April 2023, Rushdie was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine.
In January 2024, the jury selection for the trial of Hadi Matar, Rushdie's attacker, was originally scheduled to begin on January 8, 2024. However, Matar's lawyer successfully petitioned to delay the trial so that they could review Rushdie's memoir and any related materials before the trial began, as the documents constitute evidence.
In April 2024, Rushdie's autobiographical book, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, was published. The book details the attack Rushdie experienced and his recovery and was longlisted for the 2024 National Book Award for Nonfiction.
In May 2024, Salman Rushdie argued that if a Palestinian state ever came into being, it would resemble a "Taliban-like state" and become a client state of Iran. He also voiced his puzzlement regarding the current support of progressive students for what he described as a "fascist terrorist group".
In February 2025, Hadi Matar, the attacker, was found guilty of attempted murder and assault in connection with the stabbing of Salman Rushdie.
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